Guyana is one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, with a small population of fewer than one million people. Most of its population hugs the Atlantic coast. Despite a wealth of natural resources, Guyana’s location on the relatively remote northeast shoulder of South America, political dysfunction until the 1990s, and a longstanding border dispute with neighboring Venezuela have left the country in challenged economic straits. The recent discovery of a large offshore track of oil could change this, but also opens the door to new tensions with Venezuela, and could make Guyana one of the Caribbean’s hot spots in 2017.

In early January two major oil companies, Exxon Mobil and Hess, announced that they had successfully drilled a deepwater exploration well that strongly suggests that the seafloor beneath Guyana’s coastal waters contains one of the largest oil and natural-gas discoveries in recent years.

The offshore field, called Liza, has been under exploration for a number of years, but recent efforts indicate that the field could contain 1.4 billion barrels of oil mixed with natural gas. If so, this would be comparable with some of the largest fields drilled in South America. According to the New York Times’ Clifford Krauss, “Early rough estimates by experts of how much recoverable oil Guyana could have range to more than four billion barrels, which at today’s prices would be worth more than $200 billion.”